Begin OSU masthead and toolbar

The Ohio State University
www.osu.edu

Communicating

You can communicate in Second Life via text chat, voice chat, or instant message (which is a private avatar-to-avatar communication).

Text and voice chatting can be seen or heard by avatars up to 20 meters away in-world. Just because you can see an avatar doesn’t necessarily mean the person behind it will be able to read or hear your conversation.

Text Chat

To text chat:

  1. Click the Chat button on the lower left of the program window.
  2. Type your content and press Enter on your keyboard.
  3. To stop chatting, press Escape on your keyboard.

Click "History" to view your entire conversation. Note, you can copy and paste your History into a word processing program for easy archiving of class discussion for later reference.

Voice Chat

To use voice chat, you will need a microphone and speakers.

To set up voice chat:

  1. Choose Edit from the menu bar and click Preferences.
  2. Choose the Voice Chat tab and click Run Voice Setup Wizard…

Instant Message (IM)

To send an IM, right click on the avatar, access that person on your friend list, or perform a profile search. (See Basic Tips: Making Friends for instructions on adding avatars to your friend list.)

Sending an IM in-world does not have the same distance restrictions as text or voice chatting, and someone who is currently offline can receive IMs. He or she will receive the message the next time Second Life is launched.